This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Despite the emergence of the “electronic age,” there is still great demand for printed products. For example, commercial printing has annual retail sales over $700 billion. Print service providers (PSPs) fulfill the demand for printed products by printing everything from photographs and brochures, course materials, periodicals and books, to advertisements and product packaging. The customers may be individuals, groups of individuals, or organizations (non-profit, small business, corporation, and the like). The PSPs may function to process print jobs for multiple individuals, such as, the customers of a large retailer, wherein the large retailer takes orders from the individuals (e.g., for photo calendars), and submits the order as a batch of individual customer orders to the PSP.
In general, the customer creates the material to be printed, or works with a third-party provider to generate the material to be printed. The customer then submits an order including one or more materials for the PSP to print, along with one or more additional print parameters (e.g., substrate stock, number of copies, due date, any special instructions such as laminating and quality level, and shipping information). In addition, the PSP may include a number of production operations, including pre-press production, press production, and post-press production. During pre-press production, the print job is converted to the requisite format (e.g., a digital file format). Then, during press production, the print job is printed on printing machines. Then, during post-press production, the print job is finished by laminating, cutting, collating, binding, sorting/binning, packaging, and shipping. Quality Assurance (QA) may also be implemented during one or more of the production operations.
Each of the production operations may include automated processes and/or manual processes, as well as operators and their respective line managers. At each stage of the production operations, there may be multiple resources (machines, workers, etc.) that can provide the same function but with different availability, capability, and capacity. The selection and scheduling of the resources impacts the cost and lead times (time taken to fulfill an order) associated with the print job. Today, machine selection and scheduling is typically carried out by operation managers based on their experiences and intuition with respect to the particular PSP as well as the print industry in general.